Published: Sunday, December 2, 2012 at 7:23 p.m.

Last Modified: Sunday, December 2, 2012 at 7:23 p.m.

DNA removed from the clothing of the slain Christine Walker could send the hunt for her murderer in a new direction.

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The 1959 Walker family murder has been investigated by three generations of Sarasota County sheriff's detectives. Their biggest break came in 2004, when improved technology helped crime lab technicians recover a DNA profile believed to match the killer.

But so far, the DNA left behind when Christine Walker was raped and killed has only excluded suspects.

A cousin who was rumored to secretly love Christine Walker did not match the profile; neither did the man who found the bodies. All told, more than 30 suspects with ties to the Walkers have been dismissed because the DNA profile did not match.

Now detectives hope to find a match in a Kansas prison cemetery, where Dick Hickock and Perry Smith are buried. The criminals were famously profiled after murdering the Clutter family in Truman Capote's classic work, "In Cold Blood."

On the run after those murders in Holcomb, Kan., the two men passed through Florida a month later. The timelines of their flight, and of the Walker murders, bear uncanny similarities.

And though the bodies of Smith and Hickock have lain in the ground for four decades, there could be DNA in a femur bone, or a molar, that could be compared to the DNA recovered from the Walker home.

Early on in the investigation, the killers passed a lie detector test and were excluded.

That lie detector test was later declared worthless.

A DNA test is the kind of proof that sticks, narrowing down the uncertainty to hundreds or thousandths of a percentage point.

Sifting through traces

Detectives suspect that Christine Walker was the first member of her family to arrive home on Dec. 19, 1959. She was raped and killed. Her farm hand husband, Cliff Walker, was shot to death at the door of their home in Osprey. Their two young children were the last to die.

Sarasota County sheriff's detective Kim McGath suspects that the Walkers, who were shopping for a car earlier that day, may have been targeted by Hickock and Smith.

Detectives know the two men were driving a stolen Chevy Bel Air, the same model the Walkers considered buying. The two fleeing killers had nearly run out of money when they reached Sarasota, and were known to frequent car dealerships and gas stations.

Decades after the crime, forensic analysts began a hunt for traces of DNA on aging evidence from the Walker home, re-examining every item available.

McGath said a few hairs found at the crime scene did not provide DNA but could have evidentiary value.

A microscopic exam showed that the hairs - one black, one blonde - did not match hairs from any of the Walkers, and are consistent with the hair colors of Smith and Hickock.

The black hair was found near the bathtub where 2-year-old Debbie Walker was drowned. McGath suspects it came from the dark-haired Smith, who later would tell Capote that he was held under ice water in a bathtub by a nurse when he was a child.

The other hair could be from Hickock, McGath said. It was found near Christine Walker, possibly left when she was raped. Hickock had wanted to rape 16-year-old Nancy Clutter in Kansas, but Smith told investigators and Capote that he stopped him.

Semen left on Christine's underwear provided the DNA profile, which a Florida Department of Law Enforcement lab generated in 2004.

Living under a cloud

Several of the suspects who initially offered DNA for a comparison to the crime scene sample had lived for years under suspicion that they had killed the Walkers.

For them, the negative results that started coming out in 2006 were a huge relief.

Early investigators considered Don McLeod, the man who discovered the Walkers' bodies, an obvious suspect. He was one of the first to volunteer a swab from inside his cheek for DNA comparisons.

Investigators and even some of the Walkers' friends and family suspected for years that Elbert Walker, Cliff's cousin, was the killer. He had acted oddly after the murders, some said, and rumors swirled that he secretly loved Christine. Those rumors persisted even though he passed three lie detector tests over the years. DNA test results were negative for him, too.

With over 30 suspects now tested, the DNA tests have helped bring scrutiny back to Hickock and Smith.

Before the Sheriff's Office even considered exhuming the bodies of Hickock and Smith, McGath said she scoured the Clutter homicide case for biological traces of the men.

The evidence was scattered through local and state agencies across Kansas, and none of it contained the criminals' DNA.

Because DNA is hereditary, McGath also tried to reach out to surviving relatives of Hickock and Smith, hoping to find a donor willing to provide a DNA sample. Smith never married but had a sister with children, and Hickock had three sons from his two marriages, both ending in divorce.

McGath had no luck on that front, either, and began talking with Kansas authorities about exhumations.

Some evidence never dies

Inside the caskets, their faces may still be recognizable.

After decades in their graves, Hickock and Smith's hair and fingernails would still be about the same length, despite myths that they keep growing on dead bodies. But by now the color of their skin is likely darker, more of a grey-brown color with some shades of green, said Dr. Russell Vega, the medical examiner for Sarasota County.

"Clearly it would not look like a living person, but it would have all the tissues and organs identifiable and intact," Vega said. "You might have nothing but bones, depending on if moisture could get in."

The fact that Hickock and Smith's bodies are in Kansas could be a stroke of luck for Sarasota detectives. Viable DNA tends to last longer in bodies buried in arid areas with higher elevations, like Kansas. Bodies exhumed in Florida can have some of the worst contamination, Vega said, because the water table is so close and aging caskets often become saturated with moisture.

Embalming helps prevent bacteria from taking over the body, Vega said, but can also degrade DNA.

McGath said there is a distinct chance Hickock and Smith's DNA might not match or be too degraded for a comparison.

"There are so many reasons, and there is a possibility that we may not have a match," McGath admits.

Time is not the most important factor for recovering DNA from a body — one could have almost completely decomposed in six months under certain conditions, while another could be preserved for a thousand years.

Dr. Monte Miller, a DNA analyst in southern California, said at the moment of death, one of the first things the body does is start to break down the DNA.

Heat, chemicals, ultraviolet radiation and moisture can all help speed up the decomposition, Miller said.

Mitochondrial DNA would likely be present in remains buried in a coffin in Kansas a half-century ago, experts say.

Passed down in maternal lineage, mitochondrial DNA can be used to test skeletal remains. That DNA may be there long after nuclear DNA, the type inherited from both parents, is gone.

DNA in the body is the same everywhere except a few places, semen and blood being two that have unique patterns. It is less precise to match DNA from semen with that recovered from a molar, Miller said, but that kind of match is still a reasonable test that could give valid results.

He stressed that a DNA match is not a simple yes or no.

Miller said DNA matching is like finding a lottery ticket that matches 32 numbers, with the chance of duplicates astronomically high.

"What are the chances I could say, I think it's that guy, and be right?" he said.

An evolving science

The first DNA-based conviction in the United States was in Orange County, when a 1987 jury convicted Tommy Lee Andrews of rape after tests matched his DNA to a blood sample with semen traces found in a rape victim.

Since then, DNA's use in courtrooms has become increasingly commonplace – and expected by juries.

In many places funding, space and staff may not be able to keep up with the demands for DNA testing.

For DNA evidence on old unsolved crimes, the wait can take years.

"On cold cases, you have to be very, very patient," McGath said. But after 52 years, McGath has tools that the first Walker investigators could have never imagined.

"Technology is still advancing, it's getting better every year," said Amy Jeanguenat, director of operations for Bode Technology Group, which provides DNA analysis for law enforcement agencies worldwide. "Just a few years ago, the degraded samples would be harder to get samples from."

In recent years, Jeanguenat's lab has been able to test charred remains from the World Trade Center to identify missing victims. She said with modern tests, they often see skeletal remains dating back to the 1960s and much earlier.

This fall, DNA testing in Illinois helped convicted a 72-year-old man of kidnapping and murdering Maria Ridulph, a 7-year-old who vanished 55 years ago. It was one of the oldest unsolved crimes in the United States to make it to trial.

The exhumation order that McGath has been working on has not reached Kansas officials, but Sarasota County detectives are prepared to travel to the graves and bring in a tractor to pull the coffins from the ground.

<p><em>SARASOTA COUNTY</em> - A critical piece of evidence in Sarasota's most notorious cold case went undiscovered for 45 years.</p><p>The 1959 Walker family murder has been investigated by three generations of Sarasota County sheriff's detectives. Their biggest break came in 2004, when improved technology helped crime lab technicians recover a DNA profile believed to match the killer.</p><p>But so far, the DNA left behind when Christine Walker was raped and killed has only excluded suspects.</p><p>A cousin who was rumored to secretly love Christine Walker did not match the profile; neither did the man who found the bodies. All told, more than 30 suspects with ties to the Walkers have been dismissed because the DNA profile did not match.</p><p>Now detectives hope to find a match in a Kansas prison cemetery, where Dick Hickock and Perry Smith are buried. The criminals were famously profiled after murdering the Clutter family in Truman Capote's classic work, "In Cold Blood." </p><p>On the run after those murders in Holcomb, Kan., the two men passed through Florida a month later. The timelines of their flight, and of the Walker murders, bear uncanny similarities.</p><p>And though the bodies of Smith and Hickock have lain in the ground for four decades, there could be DNA in a femur bone, or a molar, that could be compared to the DNA recovered from the Walker home.</p><p>Early on in the investigation, the killers passed a lie detector test and were excluded.</p><p>That lie detector test was later declared worthless.</p><p>A DNA test is the kind of proof that sticks, narrowing down the uncertainty to hundreds or thousandths of a percentage point.</p><p>Sifting through traces</p><p>Detectives suspect that Christine Walker was the first member of her family to arrive home on Dec. 19, 1959. She was raped and killed. Her farm hand husband, Cliff Walker, was shot to death at the door of their home in Osprey. Their two young children were the last to die.</p><p>Sarasota County sheriff's detective Kim McGath suspects that the Walkers, who were shopping for a car earlier that day, may have been targeted by Hickock and Smith.</p><p>Detectives know the two men were driving a stolen Chevy Bel Air, the same model the Walkers considered buying. The two fleeing killers had nearly run out of money when they reached Sarasota, and were known to frequent car dealerships and gas stations.</p><p>Decades after the crime, forensic analysts began a hunt for traces of DNA on aging evidence from the Walker home, re-examining every item available.</p><p>McGath said a few hairs found at the crime scene did not provide DNA but could have evidentiary value.</p><p>A microscopic exam showed that the hairs - one black, one blonde - did not match hairs from any of the Walkers, and are consistent with the hair colors of Smith and Hickock.</p><p>The black hair was found near the bathtub where 2-year-old Debbie Walker was drowned. McGath suspects it came from the dark-haired Smith, who later would tell Capote that he was held under ice water in a bathtub by a nurse when he was a child. </p><p>The other hair could be from Hickock, McGath said. It was found near Christine Walker, possibly left when she was raped. Hickock had wanted to rape 16-year-old Nancy Clutter in Kansas, but Smith told investigators and Capote that he stopped him.</p><p>Semen left on Christine's underwear provided the DNA profile, which a Florida Department of Law Enforcement lab generated in 2004. </p><p>Living under a cloud</p><p>Several of the suspects who initially offered DNA for a comparison to the crime scene sample had lived for years under suspicion that they had killed the Walkers.</p><p>For them, the negative results that started coming out in 2006 were a huge relief. </p><p>Early investigators considered Don McLeod, the man who discovered the Walkers' bodies, an obvious suspect. He was one of the first to volunteer a swab from inside his cheek for DNA comparisons.</p><p>Investigators and even some of the Walkers' friends and family suspected for years that Elbert Walker, Cliff's cousin, was the killer. He had acted oddly after the murders, some said, and rumors swirled that he secretly loved Christine. Those rumors persisted even though he passed three lie detector tests over the years. DNA test results were negative for him, too.</p><p>With over 30 suspects now tested, the DNA tests have helped bring scrutiny back to Hickock and Smith.</p><p>Before the Sheriff's Office even considered exhuming the bodies of Hickock and Smith, McGath said she scoured the Clutter homicide case for biological traces of the men. </p><p>The evidence was scattered through local and state agencies across Kansas, and none of it contained the criminals' DNA.</p><p>Because DNA is hereditary, McGath also tried to reach out to surviving relatives of Hickock and Smith, hoping to find a donor willing to provide a DNA sample. Smith never married but had a sister with children, and Hickock had three sons from his two marriages, both ending in divorce.</p><p>McGath had no luck on that front, either, and began talking with Kansas authorities about exhumations.</p><p>Some evidence never dies</p><p>Inside the caskets, their faces may still be recognizable. </p><p>After decades in their graves, Hickock and Smith's hair and fingernails would still be about the same length, despite myths that they keep growing on dead bodies. But by now the color of their skin is likely darker, more of a grey-brown color with some shades of green, said Dr. Russell Vega, the medical examiner for Sarasota County. </p><p>"Clearly it would not look like a living person, but it would have all the tissues and organs identifiable and intact," Vega said. "You might have nothing but bones, depending on if moisture could get in."</p><p>The fact that Hickock and Smith's bodies are in Kansas could be a stroke of luck for Sarasota detectives. Viable DNA tends to last longer in bodies buried in arid areas with higher elevations, like Kansas. Bodies exhumed in Florida can have some of the worst contamination, Vega said, because the water table is so close and aging caskets often become saturated with moisture. </p><p>Embalming helps prevent bacteria from taking over the body, Vega said, but can also degrade DNA.</p><p>McGath said there is a distinct chance Hickock and Smith's DNA might not match or be too degraded for a comparison.</p><p>"There are so many reasons, and there is a possibility that we may not have a match," McGath admits.</p><p>Time is not the most important factor for recovering DNA from a body — one could have almost completely decomposed in six months under certain conditions, while another could be preserved for a thousand years.</p><p>Dr. Monte Miller, a DNA analyst in southern California, said at the moment of death, one of the first things the body does is start to break down the DNA.</p><p>Heat, chemicals, ultraviolet radiation and moisture can all help speed up the decomposition, Miller said.</p><p>Mitochondrial DNA would likely be present in remains buried in a coffin in Kansas a half-century ago, experts say.</p><p>Passed down in maternal lineage, mitochondrial DNA can be used to test skeletal remains. That DNA may be there long after nuclear DNA, the type inherited from both parents, is gone.</p><p>DNA in the body is the same everywhere except a few places, semen and blood being two that have unique patterns. It is less precise to match DNA from semen with that recovered from a molar, Miller said, but that kind of match is still a reasonable test that could give valid results.</p><p>He stressed that a DNA match is not a simple yes or no.</p><p>Miller said DNA matching is like finding a lottery ticket that matches 32 numbers, with the chance of duplicates astronomically high. </p><p>"What are the chances I could say, I think it's that guy, and be right?" he said.</p><p>An evolving science</p><p>The first DNA-based conviction in the United States was in Orange County, when a 1987 jury convicted Tommy Lee Andrews of rape after tests matched his DNA to a blood sample with semen traces found in a rape victim.</p><p>Since then, DNA's use in courtrooms has become increasingly commonplace – and expected by juries.</p><p>In many places funding, space and staff may not be able to keep up with the demands for DNA testing. </p><p>For DNA evidence on old unsolved crimes, the wait can take years. </p><p>"On cold cases, you have to be very, very patient," McGath said. But after 52 years, McGath has tools that the first Walker investigators could have never imagined.</p><p>"Technology is still advancing, it's getting better every year," said Amy Jeanguenat, director of operations for Bode Technology Group, which provides DNA analysis for law enforcement agencies worldwide. "Just a few years ago, the degraded samples would be harder to get samples from."</p><p>In recent years, Jeanguenat's lab has been able to test charred remains from the World Trade Center to identify missing victims. She said with modern tests, they often see skeletal remains dating back to the 1960s and much earlier.</p><p>This fall, DNA testing in Illinois helped convicted a 72-year-old man of kidnapping and murdering Maria Ridulph, a 7-year-old who vanished 55 years ago. It was one of the oldest unsolved crimes in the United States to make it to trial.</p><p>The exhumation order that McGath has been working on has not reached Kansas officials, but Sarasota County detectives are prepared to travel to the graves and bring in a tractor to pull the coffins from the ground.</p><p>The evidence they find could end the mystery of the Walker murders.</p>